Over the weekend, the funk gurus of Lettuce headlined Greenfield, MA’s Wormtown Music Festival alongside other fan-favorite artists like Turkuaz, Leftover Salmon, The Original Wailers, and more. Lettuce performed a two-set show on Saturday night, and had plenty of surprises planned for the festival crowd.

Recently, Lettuce has been experimenting with extending their songs and going deeper into jams, creating winding, psychedelic explorations within and between tunes. Appropriately and sticking with this evolution, the band kicked things off with a four-song first set, with each of the four tunes—”Reunion”, “Yakitori”, “Gang Ten”, and “Sam Huff’s Flying Ragin’ Machine”—ringing in at over 12 minutes, with the longest song of the first frame being a nearly 20-minute rendition of “Gang Ten”.

However, a major highlight of the night came during Lettuce’s second set. After opening with a 14-minute take on “The Force”, the renowned funk group worked through “Larimar” and “Ghost Of Jupiter” before the set’s standout number—an 18-minute rendition of the group’s beloved “Lettsanity”, which featured a sit-in from Kenwood Dennard, a famed jazz drummer who has previously worked with Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Maceo Parker, and many more. Notably, Dennard also serves as a professor at Berklee College Of Music, where Lettuce’s members originally met, and previously taught Lettuce’s own Adam Deitch.

As Deitch noted in a Facebook post,

Honored to have had one of my favorite drum gurus/ Teachers sit in with Lettuce last weekend!! If you HAVENT heard Maceo Parker‘s album, “Life on Planet Groove” you better listen right now!! Im talkin bout Kenwood Dennard!!!! Go friend request him, drum friends!! His elevated approach of teaching funk and life lessons is unparalleled!!

However, Adam Deitch is not the only high-profile drummer in the live music scene who has studied under Kenwood Dennard. Jason Hann, percussionist for String Cheese Incident, also offered his experiences with the prolific jazz master and teacher. He added,

Kenwood was one of the first drum clinics I saw in Miami when I was around 12. I still have the cassette tape of it. He was playing 2 keyboards on their side next to his feet. Made me get a Krumar to try and play keys while playing drums. His feet were playing the beat and he did a rap – all at the same time – that I still remember about Elvin Jones and Stewart Copeland. Got to sing it back to him when he sat in with SCI (with his collection of jaw harps) and he freaked out that anyone knew that. He’s a mega talent and super influential for being unique at the highest of levels

You can watch a video of Kenwood Dennard’s sit-in with Lettuce at Wormtown Music Festival 2018 below. You can also check out complete video of both of Lettuce’s Wormtown sets below, courtesy of gerryjdvideo.

 

Setlist: Lettuce | Wormtown Music Festival | Greenfield, MA | 9/15/2018

Set One: Reunion, Yakitori, Gang Ten, Sam Huff’s Flying Ragin’ Machine

Set Two: The Force, Larimar, Ghosts Of Jupiter, Lettsanity, Tryllis, House, Trapezoid

Set One

 

Set Two

[Videos: gerryjdvideo]